The High Court has ordered the surrender of a respondent to the United Kingdom to face prosecution for alleged conspiracy to defraud, rejecting objections to a European arrest warrant in the third attempt by UK authorities to secure his surrender.
Mr Justice Michael Peart ruled on 8 October 2008 that the warrant issued on 17 April 2007 was duly issued. The application was made under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. The judgment records that the respondent had been arrested in Ireland on foot of the warrant in July 2007 and remanded on bail pending the application.
The respondent argued that the underlying English domestic warrant had become spent after an earlier arrest in Ireland in January 2004. The judge accepted that the court could examine whether the European arrest warrant was duly issued because the challenge raised a specific issue supported by expert evidence on English law. He concluded that the domestic warrant had not been executed under English law because its command to bring the respondent before a magistrates’ court had not been completed.
The judge also held that the January 2004 arrest had no lawful basis. The warrant had not been produced for endorsement before the European Arrest Warrant Act took effect, so the earlier endorsement was without legal authority. The respondent could not rely on that purported arrest to argue that the domestic warrant had been executed and become spent.
A further objection was that the domestic warrant required the respondent to be brought before Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, which had closed. The judge rejected it, relying on evidence that the court’s work had transferred to the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court and that a person could be brought before a magistrates’ court for the relevant area.
The respondent also relied on the time elapsed since the alleged offences, which the warrant placed between 14 September 1998 and 8 October 1999. The court found no evidence of prejudice from delay and rejected the argument that surrender was barred. It also rejected estoppel and res judicata: the earlier European warrant had resulted in an order for surrender, and the appeal against that order was withdrawn after the respondent was released because the statutory time for implementing surrender had expired.
Finally, the judge ruled that the Framework Decision’s requirement to deal with European arrest warrants urgently did not give the respondent a ground to refuse surrender. Having rejected the objections, he ordered surrender. The judgment does not decide the underlying criminal charge; it concerns surrender for prosecution.